Every summer, thousands of Red Sox fans enjoy Dark ‘n Stormy® cocktails at Fenway Park in Boston served in cold ready-to-drink cans. The sleek, trendy packaging hardly suggests that the rum inside has a heritage that goes back to 1806, the year a British merchant named James Gosling set sail for Virginia with a ship packed full of wine and spirits. Becalmed at sea for 90 days, his charter expired and Gosling was forced to end his voyage about 400 miles off the coast of North Carolina, on the tiny island of Bermuda.

Gosling set up a lucrative wine and spirits import business on the island, a stronghold of the British navy at the time. In the 1850s the business first produced its own blend of rum. Known as “Old Rum,” it was sold in reclaimed champagne bottles sealed with black wax. Locals began to refer to the smooth dark rum as “Black Seal Rum,” and in the 1950s Gosling’s premiered its distinctive logo featuring a black seal balancing a rum barrel. Today, Gosling’s Black Seal Rum is Bermuda’s top-selling export product and a key ingredient in Bermuda’s national cocktail, the Dark ‘n Stormy®. A blend of Gosling’s Black Seal Rum and Gosling’s Stormy Ginger Beer (a non-alcoholic soda that’s spicier and sweeter than ginger ale), the drink is named for the storm cloud that seems to appear after floating Black Seal Rum on top of a glass of ginger beer.

Still a family-owned company after seven generations, the Gosling’s product line now includes Gosling’s Gold Rum, an amber rum used in the Bermuda Rum Swizzle, a dangerously delicious cocktail made famous by the Swizzle Inn bar, often a favorite first destination for visitors to the island. Gosling’s Family Reserve Old Rum, a super-premium sipping rum, is aged in charred oak to achieve a rich smoothness and complexity that garnered the “World’s Best Aged Rum” distinction from  the Caribbean Journal in 2012. While the trademarked Dark ‘n Stormy® cocktail remains the most popular use for Gosling’s Rum, rum fans continuously find creative ways to mix these versatile rums, such as with the Black Beauty, which bucks the traditional mojito recipe with the use of black rum. Gosling’s Rums are widely available at liquor stores, and Gosling’s Stormy Ginger Beer can be ordered online, found in supermarket soda aisles and in the mixers section of liquor stores. Discover a full list of inspiring cocktail recipes and food recipes on www.goslingsrum.com.  

First published April 2014